EVIL RETURNS TO JUDAH --- LESSON 14

KING MANASSEH AND KING AMON

From 2 Kings 21; 2 Chronicles 33

When King Hezekiah died, his twelve-year-old son Manasseh became the new king of Judah. His mother’s name was Hephzibah. Manasseh had a very long reign, and most of it was very evil in Adonai’s sight, for he did many of the same things that had been done by the nations which Adonai had driven from the land when Israel came from Egypt. He rebuilt the high places or shrines in the hills, which his father Hezekiah had torn down. He also built altars for Baal and an altar for the shameful Asherah idol, as the wicked King Ahab of Israel had done. He even served the gods of the sun, moon, and stars, placing altars to them in two courts of the temple, the place which Adonai had chosen to honour His Name. Manasseh offered some of his own sons as burnt offerings on heathen altars in the Hinnom Valley and looked for guidance from the soothsayers, fortune-tellers, and sorcerers. Adonai became very angry as Manasseh multiplied the evil practices in the land. Imagine how disgusted Adonai was when Manasseh set up a shameful Asherah idol in the temple, the place which Adonai had dedicated to bring honour to His Name. He had told David and Solomon, [I will let the temple honour My Name forever in the city of Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen above all other cities of Israel. If you will obey My Laws and Commandments which I gave to you through Moses, I will let your people remain in this land forever.] Manasseh and his people ignored Adonai’s promise. Manasseh led his people to do greater evil than the wicked nations which Adonai destroyed when He gave the land to Israel. When it became apparent that Manasseh and his people would not listen to Adonai’s warnings, Adonai sent word through His prophets. [Manasseh has led his people into idolatry and greater evil than even the Amorites did when I took the land from them and gave it to Israel,] He said. [Because of this, I will bring such terrible trouble upon Judah and Jerusalem that it will cause people’s ears to ring when they hear about it. I will cause the same thing to happen to Jerusalem that happened to Samaria. The measuring line that was stretched over Samaria will be stretched over Jerusalem. Jerusalem will be wiped like someone wiping a dish and turning it upside down. I will turn away from that part of My people who missed being captured by the Assyrians, and I will let their enemies take them, too; for these people have done more evil and caused Me greater anger than any other Israelites since the Exodus from Egypt.] No matter how much Adonai warned Manasseh and his people, they refused to listen. Adonai sent the army of the king of Assyria and they took Manasseh with hooks and bound him in bronze fetters and took him to Babylon. There in his time of great trouble, Manasseh realized how wrong he had been and cried out to Adonai in humility, begging for His help. Adonai listened to Manasseh’s prayers and let him return to Jerusalem to rule his kingdom again. Now Manasseh realized that Adonai was truly YHVH. After he returned, Manasseh rebuilt the outer wall of the City of David portion of Jerusalem as it goes westward to the Gihon Spring in the Kidron Valley, then to the Fish Gate, and from there to the Ophel area, where it was built to a great height. Manasseh also stationed army commanders in all of the fortified cities of Judah. He removed the foreign gods and took down the idol in the temple, as well as the altars which he built on the mountain where the temple was built. He destroyed the altars which he had built throughout Jerusalem and threw them outside Jerusalem. Manasseh rebuilt Adonai’s altar and offered sacrifices of peace offerings and thanksgiving offerings upon it, and commanded the people of Judah to worship only Adonai. However, the people continued to sacrifice at the altars in the high places in the hills, but now they offered sacrifices to Adonai on them and not to heathen idols. The other parts of Manasseh’s life and reign are recorded in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel. His prayer and how Adonai listened to it, and an account of his sin and faithlessness, and the places where he built the high places and set up the Asherim and the idols before he repented, are recorded in the Book of the Chronicles of the Prophets. When Manasseh died, he was buried under the floor of his palace, and his son Amon became the next king of Judah. Amon became king at the age of twenty-two, but he ruled at Jerusalem only two years. He was as evil as his father Manasseh had been. He sacrificed to idols as Manasseh had done and did even worse than he. Things became so bad that Amon’s officers formed a conspiracy and killed him in his palace. However, some people who were loyal to the king killed the assassins and made Amon’s son Josiah the new king of Judah.

COMMENTARY

ASHURBANIPAL: LAST GREAT KING OF ASSYRIA

By the time Josiah’s reforms had revived Judah, Assyria was dying in the north. Ashurbanipal, Assyria’s last great king, brought seeming prosperity to the Empire. But half a century later, Assyria’s capitals lay in ruins and its empire in the hands of Babylonians. These events threatened Judah’s independence, and signalled Jerusalem’s coming destruction. Esarhaddon, Ashurbanipal’s father, planted the seeds of Assyria’s downfall by naming his son as heir to the throne. Hoping to avoid another Babylonian rebellion, he appointed a second son, Shamash-shum-ukin, to govern Babylonia. The arrangement worked well for more than a decade. While Shamash-shum-ukin improved Babylonia, Ashurbanipal maintained the Empire. The new emperor settled a treaty with Tyre, and then completed his father’s expedition to Egypt, appointing as ruler the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho. When an Ethiopian invader from Thebes killed Necho, the Assyrians destroyed Thebes and named Necho’s son pharaoh. In 652 B.C., at the height of Ashurbanipal’s accomplishments, his brother in Babylon planned a rebellion in alliance with the Elamites, Arabians, Chaldeans and Aramaeans. The swift Assyrian response drove the Chaldeans from southern Babylonia into Elam and the remaining rebels into three Babylonian cities. The Assyrians found Ashurbanipal’s brother dead, and Ashurbanipal became king of Babylon in 647 B.C. Elam and Arabia were punished and Elam’s capital destroyed. But during the struggle, Necho’s son had expelled Assyria’s soldiers from Egypt. Exhausted from their Babylonian battles, the Assyrians made no attempt to recover their lost territory. Assyrian records do not refer to the years from 640 B.C. to Ashurbanipal’s death in 631 B.C. Ashur-etil-ilani, his chosen heir, had to fight his way to the throne. There he may have shared rule with his brother, Sin-shar-ishkun. In 625 B.C. Nabopolassar, a Chaldean from southern Babylonia, seized the Babylonian throne and made an alliance with the Medes. Egypt supported Assyria, but it was too late. Asshur, Assyria’s oldest capital, fell to the Medes in 614 B.C. Two years later, Nineveh surrendered. Ashur-uballit, the next king, fled to Haran, Assyria’s last stronghold, to await Egyptian help. When Haran was taken in 610 B.C., Ashur-uballit joined Egyptian forces in the south. Five years later, a battle between Egypt and Babylonia saw the Egyptians retreat and the Babylonians become the new masters of the Middle East.